At the Château de Tours

from 28 November 2010

until 29 May 2011

Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours

Reading, writing, photography. These three activities which enable us to understand, represent and interpret the world are the subject of this encounter at the Château de Tours between a writer, Émile Zola, who was a discoverer of photography, and a photographer, André Kertész, who celebrated the very personal pleasures of reading.

Émile Zola, the champion of literary realism, who based his work on the observation of “the facts of nature,” found photography to be the ideal medium for focusing and intensifying his meticulous examination of reality. “When I evoke the objects I have seen,” wrote Zola, “I see them as they really are, with their lines, their forms, their colours, their smells and their sounds. It is an extreme materialisation; the sun that shines on them almost dazzles me.”

André Kertész, a master photographer of the 20th century, is noted for his poetic approach to the representation of reality. “I interpret what I feel at a given moment. Not what I see, but what I feel.” What Kertész brings us in these images is the emotion inspired in him by the reader, captivated by the imaginary world of his narrative and absorbed in the pleasure of reading.

An encounter with words and images by two very different artists.

> “Émile Zola photographe”
Collection of the Château d’Eau, Toulouse. Exposition organised by Jeu de Paume in collaboration with the City of Tours and the Château d’Eau in Toulouse.

> “André Kertész. L’intime plaisir de lire”
Exhibition organised by Jeu de Paume in collaboration with the City of Tours and the Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Ministry of Culture and Communication.